by Ab Koster
On November 5 this month, IHS honorary member Adriaan van Woudenberg will celebrate his 100th birthday. He was born on November 5, 1925, in Amsterdam.
As a volunteer, he began playing with the Concertgebouw Orchestra (now the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra), seated next to the German solo horn player Richard Sell, who was also his teacher at the Amsterdam Conservatory. Along with his horn studies and his position in the Concertgebouw Orchestra, he studied piano and completed his final piano examination in 1946.
Because he was German, Richard Sell left Amsterdam and the orchestra after the Second World War in 1945. This gave Adriaan van Woudenberg the opportunity to become principal horn with Jan Bos. He held this position until 1984, performing under conductors such as Willem Mengelberg, Bernard Haitink, Kirill Kondrashin, Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy, George Szell, Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein.
Throughout his life, Adriaan van Woudenberg played a horn made by Knopf. Most of the time during his career with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, he used a single B-flat horn. At that time, many horn players in Europe played only single B-flat horns—among them Dennis Brain, Alan Civil, Peter Damm, and almost all high horn players in major orchestras.
From 1956, he was a member of the Danzi Quintet, a woodwind quintet that achieved international acclaim. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote on March 27, 1969: “All [the] musicians are fabulous masters of their own instrument. Each instrument glows with its own unique color. In ensemble they radiate a perfection of pitch, intonation, dynamics, and intellectual understanding that is a joyous thing to hear.”
In addition to his performing career, Van Woudenberg taught at the Amsterdam Conservatory, and at the conservatories of Tilburg and Maastricht. Many of his students went on to positions in leading orchestras and became successful teachers themselves, including Hans Dullaert, Paul van Zelm, and Fergus McWilliam.
Van Woudenberg never played with any orchestra other than the Concertgebouw. On December 25, 1984, he performed his final concert with the orchestra. The program featured Mahler’s Symphony No. 2.